THE TEXAS TATTLER
All the news that’s barely fit to print!
Fortune Heir Charged With Murder!
Red Rock is all abuzz with the news that Sheriff Wyatt Grayhawk has charged Jonas Goodfellow with the murder of their uncle, Ryan Fortune. It appears that this importer deliberately gave a poisoned bottle of port wine to the Fortune family’s patriarch at the recent bash to welcome the lost heirs.
But the burning question on everyone’s mind is—who’s that pretty young blonde who posted his bail money and has been by his side ever since?
That “pretty young blonde” is Jonas’s loyal assistant, Tara Summers. Ms. Summers flew from their global headquarters in San Francisco to open a satellite office in town, since Jonas can’t leave Red Rock until the charges are dropped. Our sources tell us the pair is sharing a suite at a local hotel, but from the looks they’ve been secretly exchanging, Jonas may have just leapt from the frying pan…into the fire!
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Silhouette Desire, where every month you’ll find six passionate, powerful and provocative romances.
October’s MAN OF THE MONTH is The Taming of Jackson Cade, part of bestselling author BJ James’ MEN OF BELLE TERRE miniseries, in which a tough horse breeder is gentled by a lovely veterinarian. The Texan’s Tiny Secret by Peggy Moreland tells the moving story of a woman in love with the governor of Texas and afraid her scandalous past will hurt him.
The exciting series 20 AMBER COURT continues with Katherine Garbera’s Some Kind of Incredible, in which a secretary teaches her lone-wolf boss to take a chance on love. In Her Boss’s Baby, Cathleen Galitz’s contribution to FORTUNES OF TEXAS: THE LOST HEIRS, a businessman falsely accused of a crime finds help from his faithful assistant and solace in her virginal embrace.
Jacob’s Proposal, the first book in Eileen Wilks’ dynamic new series, TALL, DARK & ELIGIBLE, features a marriage of convenience between a beauty and a devastatingly handsome financier known as the Iceman. And Maureen Child’s popular BACHELOR BATTALION marches on with Last Virgin in California, an opposites-attract romance between a tough, by-the-book marine drill instructor and a free-spirited heroine.
So celebrate the arrival of autumn by indulging yourself with all six of these not-to-be-missed love stories.
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Her Boss’s Baby
Cathleen Galitz
CATHLEEN GALITZ,
a Wyoming native, teaches English to seventh to twelfth graders in a rural school that houses kindergartners and seniors in the same building. She lives in a small Wyoming town with her husband and two children. When she’s not busy writing, teaching or working with her Cub Scout den, she can most often be found hiking or snowmobiling in the Wind River Mountains.
Meet the Fortunes of Texas
Meet the Fortunes of Texas’s Lost Heirs—membership in this Texas family has its privileges and its price. As the family gathers to welcome its newest members, it discovers a murderer in its midst…and passionate new romances that only a true-bred Texas love can bring!
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Jonas Goodfellow: Falsely arrested for Ryan Fortune’s murder, this lost heir wants nothing more to do with that nest of vipers he’d foolishly hoped would accept him as kith and kin.
Tara Summers: From the day he gave this inexperienced high school graduate her first job, she’s been in love with her boss. But now that she’s pregnant with the boss’s baby, is Jonas about to promote her to…wife?
Ryan Fortune: Having faced his own mortality, the family patriarch now has some special gifts in mind for four people who saw him through his darkest hour….
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
One
Tara Summers smoothed out the nonexistent wrinkles in the fashionable pink power suit she had chosen expressly for the occasion. Aware that she was the focus of attention in the front office of the small jail-house, she couldn’t help fretting if her skirt wasn’t a tad too short. She had picked out this particular outfit hoping it would make her feel both professional and sexy. From the head-to-toe ogling she was receiving from the officers on duty, it appeared she had achieved at least one of the two desired effects.
If only Jonas thinks so, she agonized, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.
The irony of the situation did not escape her. Five years ago the tables had been turned, and it had been Jonas Goodfellow who had arrived like a chivalrous knight of old to bail her and his kid stepsister out of jail. Only seventeen at the time, Tara had been mortified when she and Ellen had been incarcerated for a drinking violation following their high-school graduation. Still green around the gills, she had burst into tears at the first inclination that Jonas was about to administer a well-deserved tongue-lashing.
Between sobs she’d explained the reason for her unprecedented behavior. She desperately needed a job to support her ailing widowed father. At her age without a college degree or experience in anything other than part-time waitressing, life appeared hopeless.
Moved by her plight, Jonas wiped away her tears with his handkerchief and offered her a job on the spot. He was just starting up his own business and said he could use someone to mind the store and answer the phone when he was out of the country. Starting pay was more than Tara could have expected anywhere else. Not only would it help salvage her father’s dignity, the money would allow her to take a couple of college classes at night, as well.
“You’ll never regret it,” she promised him, gratefully pumping his hand like a well-oiled piston.
A pair of twinkling green eyes and a wicked smile pulled Tara back into the present. “Are you sure that a sweet young thing like yourself really wants to bail out an attempted murderer—considering the fact that you could be spending your time with an upright good-looking fellow such as myself?”
The police officer behind the desk threw out his chest to add to the appeal of his offer. He seemed nice, close to her own age and charming in a boyishly cute way. Just the sort of all-American guy her father was always after her to date. He often reminded her how much he wanted a couple more grandkids to bounce on his knee.
Tara took a deep breath before replying, “I’m positive. Now will you please take me to see Jonas?”
Regardless of how bad things looked, she wasn’t about to abandon Jonas now. This was her big chance to pay him back for his kindness and generosity. And to prove that she was no longer